Embodiments of the invention pertain generally to the field of social media, and more specifically to the use of global positioning system coordinates to share locations through social media.
Social media applications, or sites, allow a user to share his status with a selected circle of friends. When the user submits a new status, that status can be posted to the user's profile for viewing by his friends. Along with text that the user submits as the topic of the status, the social media application can also publish auxiliary information about that status, such as the time at which the status was submitted and the place from which the status was submitted. The place can be determined through a variety of different techniques. For example, the social media application can ask the user to specify a location at which the user is currently located at the time that the status is posted. For another example, the social media application can consult a global positioning system of a mobile device—such as a smart phone—through which the status is being submitted, in order to determine the current location of the mobile device at that particular moment. Popular examples of social media applications include Facebook and Twitter. Typically, these social media applications maintain a separate profile for each user of that application, and publish status updates to each user's profile as that user provides such status updates. Each user's profile is typically accessible by other users of the social media application through a web browsing application over the Internet. Such a profile is sometimes called a “page” or a “wall.”
Often, a social media application user will share his status without any associated location at all. However, at other times, a user might want his friends to know where he is at a particular moment. The user might want his friends to have this information so that they can find and meet with him if they are capable and desirous. Alternatively, the user might want his friends to have this information so that they can learn more about the kinds of places that the user enjoys frequenting. By providing a location to a social media application, a user can essentially recommend (for or against) a visit to the same place by the people who read his social media profile.
One facility that social media applications can provide to enable a user to share his current location specifically is called a “check-in.” A social media application can provide, within a user interface, a user interface element that the user can select in order to check-in. In response to the user selecting this particular user interface element, the social media application can obtain the user's current location as of the moment of the selection using any of the techniques discussed above (e.g., manual specification, automatic GPS determination, etc.). The social media application can then publish that current location to the user's profile, potentially without any other associated status text. In this manner, the user can quickly report his whereabouts to his friends.
Although checking in provides a quick way for the user to publish his current location at any desired moment, a user who is engrossed in his current activities might not remember to check in. Constantly checking in to places as the user visits them requires some diligence on the user's part. The user might prefer to “live in the moment” of his activities instead of interacting with his mobile device each time that he visits a new location of interest; such constant interaction with a mobile device can prove to be a significant (and potentially rude) distraction. The user might be so interested in the events occurring at the places to which he goes that he might completely forget to check in at any of them. After a very busy day of travel, such as might occur when the user is on vacation, the user might wish that he could recall all of his daily adventures, so that he could share those adventures with his friends on social media. Unfortunately, after the fact, the user might not be able to recall all of the locations that he visited during the day. Indeed, the user might have only had a vague notion of the general areas in which he had been. After the user has left all of the places that he has been, it can be too late for the user to check in to any of those places on social media.